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WATER EDUCATION AND INSTITUTIONAL DEVELOPMENTIntegrated water resources management inPeru through shared vision planningGuillermo Mendoza and Hal Cardwell, International Center for Integrated Water Resources Management,Institute for Water Resources of the US Army Corps of Engineers; and Pedro Guerrero, Project for Modernizationof Water Resources Management, National Water Authority of Peru, Ministry of Agriculture of PeruWater is Peru’s new gold. In the past decade, Peruhas been going through a dramatic transformationwith high economic growth and a growing prosperouspopulation. However, water is in the wrong place and thecountry recognizes the need to develop sustainable solutionsfor water management. With more than 80 per cent of its waterfalling in the Andes, hundreds of miles from the growing populationcentres along the arid coast, and hydrology already beingradically altered by melting glaciers, Peru needed to act. In 2009the country passed a new water law and set out on an ambitiousplan to develop locally-driven solutions for water sustainability.In effect, the law states that water is both an economicand social good, and that integrated water resources management(IWRM) incorporates social, cultural and environmentalvalues with the goal to maximize social and economic well-beingwithout compromising the sustainability of vital ecosystems.Easier said than done.The Chili River Basin outside Arequipa: the new water law broadens stakeholderparticipation and seeks to internalize the costs of water pollutionImage: Guillermo F. MendozaShortly after the law was passed, the newly-createdNational Water Authority of Peru (ANA) initiatedpilots at six basins to decentralize water resourcesmanagement, create river basin councils and implementtransparent and participatory planning. A keyaspect of the pilots was the use of a collaborative, technically-informedplanning process known as sharedvision planning (SVP) to develop IWRM plans thatrecognized the multiple interests of a growing society.These water resources planning efforts are history in themaking, as Peru integrates planning principles, structuredparticipation and systems modelling to supportdecision-making at river basin scales.Peru’s major water management challengesThe challenges faced by Peru are significant on threecounts. First, it was unclear how to implement the 2009Water Resources Law. Integration and public participationhave become standard goals for water resourcesmanagement worldwide. However, the logistical,technical and socio-institutional complexity of waterproblems in Peru, as elsewhere, make it difficult to findmany successes in the implemention of collaborativeplanning, trade-off analysis and decision-making forIWRM at the river basin scale.Second, water resources management in Peru hadhistorically been a centralized process largely focusedon agriculture. In contrast, the new law requires newregional governance institutions such as river basincouncils, that have authority to develop and validateparticipatory IWRM plans. The development of theseIWRM plans will require that the councils make decisionson social and economic well-being trade-offswith participation of the various interests in a basin.Investments and planning in Peru’s water resourceswill have to meet multisectoral demands on waterand Pacific draining basins, support unprecedentedeconomic growth, and enhance social equity becausemany Peruvians, especially in the headwaters of thebasins, continue to live below the poverty line.Third, water conflicts are real social stressors to aneconomy that is one of the world’s fastest growing (grossdomestic product (GDP) grew 9.8 per cent in 2008 and6.3 per cent in 2013), but that occurs largely along an arid[ 136 ]